Sheepdog Tip of the Day

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Stoicism can be seen as the "suck-it-up" philosophy. Life is hard.
Not, "I'm going to have to wait and see if I get my Christmas bonus so I
can afford the swimming pool I want" hard, but "Please, God, let the
doctors figure out what is wrong with my child" hard. Far too many people
have adopted an approach to life that is based on the assumption that
luxury and comfort are entitlements. They aren't. The old saying, "there
are only two guarantees: death and taxes," still holds true.
Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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Massad Ayoob is a national champion competitive shooter, a law enforcement
trainer, a leading researcher, and one of the most prolific police writers
today. He put it this way during our personal correspondence on this
subject: "In extreme stress situations ... we tune out all senses except
the one we need for survival. Usually that one sense is vision, but in
low-light conditions the ears can turn 'on' and the eyes turn 'off,' as the
combatants hear the gunshot but tune out the less salient muzzle flashes."
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Cops waited outside for six minutes in the Sandy Hook elementary school
massacre, while kids were getting killed. Fast response is better than
waiting for reinforcements. Mass murderers tend to be cowards and very poor
at adapting to threats, and even a single competent shooter can stop them.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Sheepdog Seminar for Churches (paraphrased)
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We were instructing a number of agency trainers in some basic marksmanship
with tactical rifles. Twice each day (first thing in the morning and first
thing after lunch) we shot a zeroing confirmation group. We have found that
most tactical scopes won't hold a zero, and the scopes on this course were
no exception, with about half needing some kind of an adjustment each time,
and some needing an alarming amount of adjustment to bring them back on
zero. It was interesting to see the reaction of these trainers when they
realized this, and they began to talk about the number of failures they got
during the qualification course of fire. They were wondering if they could
change this if they just did a zeroing exercise prior to the test. Linda
K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship
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Dr. George Bonanno's research tells us that there are several components to
psychological resilience. One is psychological hardiness, which consists of
being committed to finding meaningful purpose in life, the belief that you
can influence your surroundings and the outcome of events, and the belief
that you can learn and grow from negative experiences. He says that other
paths that contribute to psychological resilience include high
self-confidence and self-esteem, laughter, and finding positive emotions
such as gratitude, interest, and love. (And I would add: honor, courage,
fidelity, sacrifice, and nobility.) A final ingredient that Dr. Bonanno
says has been demonstrated to be helpful in surviving trauma is that of
repressing emotions. Many modern psychologists believe that this is
dysfunctional and pathological, but this has been a key ingredient in
warrior survival throughout history, as personified in the laconic
Spartans, the stoic Romans, the inscrutable samurai, and the stiff
upper-lipped Brits. All of which establishes a scientific basis for the
warrior sprit discussed throughout this book. Thus, most of our warriors
will be just fine, and those who read this book and embrace the warrior
spirit are even more likely to overcome adversity. We just need to be sure
that our study of psychiatric illness in combat does not turn us into
psychological hypochondriacs, or "psychochondriacs." Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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Our warriors are the ones who create the social foundation of safety. They
are the ones who face down the Universal Human Phobia, the most toxic,
corrosive, destructive element that can impact our society. They are the
foundation of the building, and if the foundation of the building crumbles,
the building will fall. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Some Green Berets were required practice realistic fighting and then
restrain actors with "flex-cuffs"--a type of flexible handcuff consisting
of a narrow plastic strip with a small one-way hole on one end. The
opposite (running) end is inserted into the hole and can then be tightened.
(Smaller versions are sometimes used to tie off plastic garbage bags.)
Inserting the end of the restraint into that little hole takes a relatively
high level of fine-motor control, a process that had not been rehearsed
extensively by the Green Berets. The result was that the individuals who
had not "pre-threaded" their flex-cuffs as they had been taught, had
significantly more difficulty when it came to performing cuffing procedures
under extremely high stress. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive
citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for
your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath--a
wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for
your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is
walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness,
into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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In 2002, Anthony Harris and a team of scholars from the University of
Massachusetts and Harvard, published a landmark study in the journal,
Homicide Studies, which concluded that medical technology advances since
1970 have prevented approximately three out of four murders. That is, if we
had 1970s level medical technology, the murder rate would be three or four
times higher than it is today. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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